About
Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Russian émigré parents, Dr. Ermolaeva is proud to hold dual citizenship from the United States and Latvia, where her mother was born. Dr. Ermolaeva was classically trained as a flutist but shifted her focus to musicology as an undergraduate at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N.J.). Dr. Ermolaeva wrote her senior thesis on the Russian composer Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825) and continued her study of Russian music as a graduate student at Princeton University. Ermolaeva completed her graduate studies in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (validated by the University of St. Andrews), where she wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Sergei Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace" (Op. 91) under the supervision of Prof. Rita McAllister. As part of her Ph.D., Ermolaeva reconstructed the original version of "War and Peace" before it underwent substantial revision due to Soviet censorship and became the version most often performed to date. Her edition and research reveals that Prokofiev's original vision for the opera entailed a more intimate opera focussed on character development rather than on broad nationalistic themes.
Dr. Ermolaeva's version of "War and Peace," co-edited with Prof. McAllister, was subsequently performed by the Welsh National Opera under the direction of Sir David Pountney and conductor Tomáš Hanus in 2018-2019. The production was staged in Covent Garden (London, U.K.) in July 2019.
Dr. Ermolaeva began her career as a Russian Orthodox Liturgical Choral Director at the age of 16. She received her certificate in Russian Orthodox Liturgical Choral Conducting from Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, N.Y.), and over her twenty-five-year career, she has served as the musical director for parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Orthodox Church of America. Since 2022, Dr. Ermolaeva has been the musical director at Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow, Orthodox Church in Princeton, NJ, where she is developing the uncommon practice of Orthodox congregational singing.
Dr. Ermolaeva has been a licensed Music Together® teacher since 2014 and she taught early childhood music classes at Music Together Princeton Lab School (Princeton and Hopewell, NJ) from 2017-2021. Building upon her experience in early childhood music, Dr. Ermolaeva joined the Song Advisory Board of Music Together Worldwide, where she served as a musicological consultant on the historical origins of children's songs in the Music Together curriculum. Her article on the problematic racist origins of the popular American children's song "I've Been Working On The Railroad" has garnered over 250K views.
Dr. Ermolaeva has taught music history courses at Princeton University, The College of New Jersey, and the Princeton Adult School. She has presented her research in Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. at national and international conferences, including the American Musicological Society; the Society for Ethnomusicology; the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies; Music and the Moving Image; the Royal Music Association; and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. Dr. Ermolaeva gave the Keynote lecture at the annual Music Together conference in 2019 and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Hawai'i at Manōa, Northern Kentucky University, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Ermolaeva lives in Montgomery, N.J., with her husband Alex and her son Nikolai.